"The notion that such persons are gay of heart and carefree is curiously untrue. They lead, as a matter of fact, an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats."- James Thurber, My Life and Hard Times

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Ah, the horror!

"So, Gayle, ever watch anything from OUR century?"

Yes, you little Smarty Pantsers. My first horror movie was in 1976. A friend and I worked together at a corn company in the middle of a farm, and had to run reports that took two-and-a-half hours (ah, early, single processing computers), and typically didn't end until after 10 p.m. With nothing else to do, we thought we'd run into town and catch a movie.

Let me just start out by saying, I probably wouldn't have gone to see this movie if I'd seen the trailer. I mean, why don't you just show us the ending, too, Mr. Movie Announcer Voice? You've shown us everything else.

We left the theater laughing, as in, "HA HA THAT WAS SCARY, HUH? WOW, HA HA, COOL." You know. A little too loud. A little too hard. We drove back to the very dark farm, unlocked the office, and turned on the first set of lights. It was about 11:00 p.m.

"We don't need to lock the door behind us, do we?" my friend asked.

"No," I replied.

We both looked back at the darkness outside. Then we locked the door, and turned on every light in the building.

Carrie was my first residual-terror, nightmare-inducing movie, and I wasn't gung ho to see another one.

I was moved to go buy the book, though. I ended up reading a lot of Stephen King's books. I loved his interview in Playboy (I'm a girl, 'K? I do read the interviews), especially when he said (paraphrasing), "It would be a great tragedy, but I would consider it the highest compliment of my work if I actually scared someone to death."